Child health bill directs millions to select hospitals

August 12, 2007|By ROBERT PEAR The New York Times

WASHINGTON — Despite promises by Congress to end the secrecy of earmarks and other pet projects, the House of Representatives has quietly funneled hundreds of millions of dollars to specific hospitals and health care providers under a bill passed this month to help low-income children.

Instead of naming the hospitals, the bill describes them in cryptic terms, so that identifying a beneficiary is like solving a riddle. Most of the provisions were added to the bill at the request of Democratic lawmakers.

One hospital, Bay Area Medical Center, sits on Green Bay, straddling the border between Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, more than 200 miles north of Chicago. The bill would increase Medicare payments to the hospital by instructing federal officials to assume that it was in Chicago, where Medicare rates are set to cover substantially higher wages for hospital workers.

Lawmakers did not identify the hospital by name. For the purpose of Medicare, the bill said, "any hospital that is co-located in Marinette, Wis., and Menominee, Mich., is deemed to be located in Chicago." Bay Area Medical Center is the only hospital fitting that description.

The primary purpose of the bill is to expand the Children's Health Insurance Program while enhancing benefits for older people in traditional Medicare. But a review of the bill by The New York Times found that it would also direct millions of dollars a year to about 40 favored hospitals, by increasing their Medicare payments.

Some Republicans have complained about what they call "hospital pork." Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas, said the bill was "littered with earmarks for hospital-specific projects."

Republicans sometimes did the same thing when they controlled Congress. Under a 1999 law, for example, a small hospital in rural Dixon, Ill., was deemed to be in the Chicago area - 95 miles away - at the behest of its congressman, J. Dennis Hastert, who was then speaker. Urban hospitals would also receive some federal largess.

When Democrats took control of Congress, they promised to be more open and accountable, saying they would disclose the purpose of each earmark, the name of the lawmaker requesting it and the name and address of the intended recipient.

But Democrats said they had no list of the projects in the recently passed bill and no explicit criteria or standards.